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What is "Palaeo"conservatism?
My own questions | november 13, 2001 | Me

Posted on 11/13/2001 12:10:56 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator

I do not post these musings of mine to be disagreeable or provocative, but I simply do not understand the consistent inconsistencies of "palaeo"conservatives. And I am not referring to their position on Communist Arabs vis a vis their position on every other Communist in the world. I am referring to something far more basic.

I do not understand someone calling himself a "palaeo"conservative who then invokes "liberty," "rights," etc., for the very simple reason that "palaeo"conservatism connotes a European-style conservatism that opposes these very things in the name of Throne and Altar. So why do our disciples of Joseph de la Maistre pose as followers of Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, or Friedrich von Hayek?

I don't know. Honestly. I'm asking.

True, Charley Reese and Joseph Sobran (unlike their more honest and consistent fellow, Pat Buchanan) pose as across-the-board individualist Jeffersonian ideologues. But truly consistern libertarians, even the most "rightwing," took positions on civil rights and the new left in the Sixties that were (and are) anathema to some of these fellow travellers. I recently went to a libertarian site (this one here) where I was impressed with the fearless consistency of a true libertarian, such as Rothbard. I urge interested parties to read some of Rothbard's writings here (particularly "Liberty and the New Left") and honestly ask themselves if they can imagine "libertarians" like Sobran or Reese (or their supporters here at FR) saying such things.

Imagine, for example, the following quotation from Rothbard, from the article just cited:

It is no wonder then that, confronted by the spectre of this Leviathan, many people devoted to the liberty of the individual turned to the Right-wing, which seemed to offer a groundwork for saving the individual from this burgeoning morass. But the Right-wing, by embracing American militarism and imperialism, as well as police brutality against the Negro people, faced the most vital issues of our time . . . and came down squarely on the side of the State and agaisnt the person. The torch of liberty against the Establishment passed therefore to the New Left.

Okay, the militarism/imperialism quote is right in character, but can you honestly imagine Sobran saying such things about "police brutality against the Negro people" or heaping such praises on the New Left in an address before Mississippi's "Council of Conservative Citizens?" Or Reese saying such things before a League of the South convention???

Something doesn't fit here.

The thing is, the "palaeo"right has roots going back to the turn-of-the-century European right (eg, Action Francaise) as well as to the Austrian school of economics. In fact, sometimes these roots jump out from the midst of libertarian rhetoric--for example, when someone stops thumping the First Amendment long enough to bemoan the subversive, rootless, cosmopolitan nature of international capitalism (and surely no one expects libertarian Austrian economics to create a Pat Buchanan-style monocultural country!), or to defend Salazar Portugal or Vichy France.

In short, what we are faced with here is the same situation as on the Left, where unwashed, undisciplined, excrement-throwing hippies rioted in favor of the ultra-orderly goose-stepping military dictatorships in Cuba and Vietnam. In each case--Left and Right--the American section advocated positions that the mother movement in the mother country would not tolerate. For one thing, Communist countries exploit and use totalitarian patriotism; no one in Cuba burns the Cuban flag and gets away with it, I guarantee. Yet partisans of nationalist-communist Cuba advocate the "right" of Americans to burn their national flag. And can anyone imagine what Franco or Salazar would have done to some dissident spouting Rothbard's rhetoric back in Iberia in the 1950's or 60's? Yet once again, a philosophy alien to the mother country is seized upon by native Falangists as the essence of the movement.

I don't get it. Palaeos, like Leftists, don't seem to be able to make up their minds. Are they in favor of or opposed to "rights liberalism?" Do they dream of a reborn medieval European chr*stendom, or a reborn early-federal-period enlightenment/Masonic United States of America? Do they want a virtually nonexistent government or something like the strong, paternalistic governments of Franco, Salazar, and Petain that will preserve the purity of the ethnoculture? Or they for or against free trade? (It is forgotten by today's Buchananite Confederacy-partisans that "free trade" was one of the doctrines most dear to the real Confederacy.) Are you for Jeffersonial localism or against it when a Hispanic border town votes to make Spanish (the language of Franco!) its official language?

I wonder if I could possibly be more confused than you yourselves seem to be.

Honestly, it does sometimes seem that the issue that defines "palaeo"ism is hostility to Israel. Why else would someone like "Gecko," a FReeper who openly admired 19th Century German "conservatism," which he admitted was a form of state socialism, be considered a member of the family by "disciples of Ludwig von Mises?" None of this makes any sense at all.

As a final postscript, I must add once more that I am myself a "palaeo" in all my instincts (except that I don't go around advocating a Biblical Theocracy for Israel and a Masonic republic for the United States, nor do I brandish the Bill of Rights like an ACLU lawyer). Whatever the intrinsic opposition between palaeoconservatism (at least of the more honest de la Maistre variety) and a reborn Halakhic Torah state based on the Throne and Altar in Jerusalem, I have never been able to discover them. I guess the rest of you know something I don't (although it sure as heck ain't the Bible). If there is some law requiring "true" palaeoconservatism to be based on European idealist philosophy, Hellenistic philosophy, or Austrian libertarian economics rather than the Divinely-Dictated Word of the Creator, I would like to hear about it. All I know is the rest of you "palaeos" seem to take hostility to Judaism (not just Zionism and Israel but Judaism itself) as a given for anyone who wants to be a member of the "club." And you seem to have a mutual agreement to act as though Biblical Fundamentalist Zionism didn't exist and that all sympathy for Israel originated in the philosophy of former Trotskyist/globalist/capitalist/neoconservatism (which is confusing because according to libertarianism capitalism is good). I have moreover learned from past experience that if I question any of you about your position on the Bible you ignore it with a smirk I can practically feel coming out of the monitor.

My attitude is as follows: for true libertarians who are actually sincere and consistent I have a deep respect, even though I disagree with you philosophy. For people who insist that one should be required to oppose the existence of a Jewish State on the ancient 'Eretz Yisra'el in order to even consider himself a conservative, you can all boil in hot excrement, since I have no desire to belong to your loathsome `Amaleq-spawned society. I simply wish I could understand why conservatism--which to me has always meant an acknowledgement of the Jewish G-d and His Word--has spawned so many people whose fundamental outlook is so diametrically opposed to this.

At any rate, while I do not expect any other than taunting, smart-aleck replies, I will most assuredly listen with an open mind to any explanation of the otherwise inexplicable Franco/Ayn Rand connection.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: paleocons; paleolist
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To: Lurking Libertarian
Thank you very much for your thoughtful response. Shalom and blessings to you and yours, TG
221 posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:17 PM PST by Thinkin' Gal
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To: Architect
Irving was convicted

Somewhere above you wrote that you understood courts. LOL

he was a Hitler apologist and a Holocaust denier.... That does not make him an anti-semite

I know. Without the offical sealed dues paid Anti- Semite card in his name, there is just no proof.

If you were a comedy writer it would be funny. But, you're not- are you?

222 posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:17 PM PST by Sabramerican
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To: Sabramerican
You are absolutely incapable of making any kind of distinctions whatever. If someone is not on the Amen Israel bandwagon, he's a Jew hater. Just like bubba la mubba and a half-dozen other people have accused me of.

You are pathetic. Goodbye.

223 posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:21 PM PST by Architect
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To: Lurking Libertarian
Like Sharton, Sobran needs a "schtick" to play to the target audience, who lap up the anti-semite stuff.

I'm not letting either guy off the hook for using it, but I believe they're both too intelligent to really believe that stuff.

Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'm convinced Sobran says that stuff to ingratiate himself with the people who read him, and of course, to make $$$ (which is worse, in some ways, than actually believing it).

224 posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:23 PM PST by Senator Pardek
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To: Senator Pardek
Sharton=Sharpton. Duh.
225 posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:23 PM PST by Senator Pardek
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Comment #226 Removed by Moderator

To: Architect
"...Just like bubba la mubba..."
"...Jerks like you..."

Ha, Bart the Architecture of his own idiocy.
Crawl back to your terrorist masters, POS.

227 posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:57 PM PST by MrBambaLaMamba
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To: x
Re your post 216:

Thank you for your honesty and your consistency. I appreciate them both.

As to "neoconservatives," if you ever find a "neoconservative" publication advocating the restoration of the Biblical order, complete with Theocracy and animal sacrifices, kindly let me know. Since I advocate these things I will be proved a "neoconservative" if this is indeed their doctrine. But I have always suspected that the "neos" were worshippers of enlightenment western style democracy, secularism, and capitalism, and that they sought to justify a Jewish state in the ancient Homeland on those grounds--something that simply cannot be done, btw.

No, most Israelis are not like me. Most are secular, whether they are on the Left or Right. And here in the West, since the "emancipation" of Jews by the "enlightenment" even the most traditional religious Jews use "enlightenment" rhetoric to justify their practice of Judaism (you know, Jews have the "right" to observe Torah because "everyone" has the "right" to "personal autonomy," etc.--even the kippah, actually a symbol of submission to G-d, is now often justified as a sign of ethnic pride and the "tolerance" of multicultural America). I realize some of the things I say about full Torah Judaism (which is simply the Biblical Theocracy in exile with all that that implies) would not be said by any Jew. And what a shame that is.

It must be the function of us Fundamentalist Noachides to say these things to help prepare the world for the Eschaton.

228 posted on 11/16/2001 1:12:02 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
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To: Agrarian
Sorry for the bungled German, only as good as the available technology.
I mistook your post, as being an endorsement of Bart and his masters. Keep on cruisin' on
BTW - I am always "light".
233 posted on 11/16/2001 1:12:56 PM PST by MrBambaLaMamba
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To: Zionist Conspirator
I don't know where you get your "European" orientation for Paleos. Paleos share a traditional American outlook that can be found in the writings of Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, M E Bradford, Richard Weaver, among others.
238 posted on 11/16/2001 1:14:17 PM PST by Pelham
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To: x
Another one of your inevitably eruidite and eloquent posts, but I don't think you grapple with what a mainsteam Paleo actually believes on the key issues in America at this place and time. I don't think there is much division. But IMO, most of it is wrongheaded, and/or ugly. It is all about closing the gates, and stopping economic and demographic change. It is highly interventionist domestically, while of course being isolationtionist and autarkic with repect to issues beyond our shores. And even if successful politically (which it will never be), it is doomed to fail in actual application.
239 posted on 11/16/2001 1:14:19 PM PST by Torie
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To: Torie
What is coming otherwise, the unified world state or something similar, is ugly. I don't think loyalty to the people one grew up with deserves such insults. If you live in New York or Los Angeles, the multicultural state is already your reality. But if you live elsewhere, it's something new and unsettling. In the past, our great hinterland insured that immigrants could be assimilated into a great, growing and vital American culture. Today, more and more of us are living in a multicultural world without borders and there is little guarantee that immigrants or even the native born will be assimilated to anything that past generations of Americans would recognize as American.

What's also unsettling is that the empire defines opposition to it as ugly and ignoble, while it devotes itself to increasing its own wealth and power. There is a hypocrisy there that pursues its own advantage in a mercenary fashion but demands that it be crowned with moral superiority at the same time.

I'd agree with you that alternative policies may not meet with success, but I marvel at how blind and stupid the empire can be. Imagine, now American conservatives have resurrected the philosophy of British imperialism -- as though we don't already know how that will end up.

We emphasize this or that fringe group and talk about how dangerous it is. Right now I suppose that's only natural. People are finding out that we are all a part of the same powerful, yet threatened, commercial country. We are all in the same boat now, sink or swim. But when this war is over we ought to give a little thought to where the country and the world as a whole are going and what is in store for us if we follow that path. Emphasis on this little dissenting faction, or condemnation of that small ideological group, ignores the question of just where the mainstream is headed.

Love them or hate them or just ignore them, movements like paleoconservatism are more important as responses to the mainstream and critiques of it, than as ideologies in their own right. Whatever happens to paleoconservatism, the dangers and deficiencies of globalization remain and we ignore them at our peril.

240 posted on 11/16/2001 1:14:43 PM PST by x
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